


american science

by bevcrushers (dothraloki)



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: 5 Times, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:05:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14230935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dothraloki/pseuds/bevcrushers
Summary: a 5 times fic. the red dwarf crew have always suspected there was more to rimmer and lister's relationship than what meets the eye.--elements inspired by cazflibs' incredible the glitches and the glows series





	1. pre-series/petersen

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Best Served Cold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10875192) by [cazflibs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cazflibs/pseuds/cazflibs). 



> each chapter of this will be another person's perspective on rimmer/lister's relationship.

_pre-series_

They shoulder into the mess together, fighting to get through the doorway like bickering siblings.

Chen nudges him, and Petersen grins, eagerly awaiting the newest form of entertainment. Over the last few weeks, disagreements between Lister and his roommate had been gradually ramping up in intensity. The scouser constantly complained about him and _his stupid smeggin’ pencils and his tunnel-sized smeggin’ nostrils_. Petersen, frankly, couldn’t imagine ever caring about anything Arnold Rimmer had to say – and he wasn’t sure why Lister did, either.

“You’re on report, Lister. Obstruction of superior officer.”

“See if I give one single smeg, bog-breath,” is Lister’s curt reply.

Rimmer glares, hand already reaching out for his report book. “Bog breath?”

“Yeah, bog breath.”

“Just wait until Hollister hears about this, Lister, you’ll be on PD until you finish this trip.”

Lister casts a backwards glance at him as he makes his way towards the groups’ customary table. “You wish, smeghead.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Selby smirks as he takes his seat, groaning in annoyance.

He lights up immediately, taking a deep drag. Someone – Chen – slides him a can across the table which he catches and opens with a satisfying pop. “He drives me absolutely spare. You guys have no idea how it is.”

“You’ve said,” says Chen, exchanging an amused look with Selby. “Over and over again.”

Lister glances up at them, half-listening. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re _always_ complaining about Rimmer,” says Petersen. “Constantly. If you’re not fighting with him then you’re complaining to us about him. Or winding him up _and then_ complaining to us about him. ”

“Because he’s annoying,” Lister glares. “You know how it is.  You complain about him too.”

“Yeah but not like you – not _all the time_ ,” says Selby. “You’re always going on about him. It’s like you’re _fixated_.”

“Smeg off,” Lister snaps. “I live with him and I work with him. I spend most of my time in close proximity to his arseholishness. If it were any of you, you would be saying the same thing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Selby grins. “Whatever you say, mate.”

“ _Honest_ \- ”

The commotion at the far end of the room interrupts them -  the familiar sound of clipped, precise Io vowels. Lister’s head snaps up, and Petersen cackles. “You’re like the boy who pulls the girl’s pigtails on the playground, Lister.”

“ _Shut the smeg up_.”


	2. series one/the cat

_series one_

The Cat wakes up, not for the first time, to the sound of yelling.

He sits up, adjusts his curlers and grabs his nightgown. How the hell he was supposed to get his beauty sleep without actually being able to _sleep_ is a question that he guesses the ape and the ape-light had never really considered - but he had. Six times already. And Lister had only been out of stasis three weeks. He shuffles out of his room, up the stairs and down the corridor, indignant and mad as hell – mad enough that he’s willing to let them see him in his sleep clothes.

The two are glaring at each other, Lister from his position on the top-bunk, Goalpost Head stood in the centre of the room dressed in the godawful starched mess he calls ‘clothes’ – it’s a scene that Cat had been privy to many times before. Sometimes it was funny. Other times, it’s 0200 hours and then it’s less funny.

“You two forget there are other, more beautiful people, living here too?” says the Cat. “Can’t save your yelling for daylight hours?”

“Tell him, not me,” says Lister, still glaring.

“Oh, so you’re saying I started it?”

“I dunno, smeghead, who else could it have been? Mother Teresa? Jim Bexley Speed?”

Rimmer’s tone is mocking. “Could it possibly have been the great baboon-bellied wastrel I’m staring at right now?”

“Man, I don’t have time for this,” says the Cat. “The way I see it - if you two can’t stop arguing, you can either," he counts them off on his fingers, "one: stop sharing one of the many, many rooms on this ship; or two: you can take your little lovers’ spat _somewhere else_.”

With that, he’s out of the room and back down the corridor. He’ll never understand humans and their stupid convoluted mating rituals.


	3. chapter three/kryten

_series three_

Kryten 2X4B 532P, B.S doesn’t remember the first time he encountered the Red Dwarf crew. He’s told that it was all very dramatic, that he behaved rather out of character. It takes Mr Rimmer a full month before he stops looking at him like he’s something he found on the inside an old tissue. Mr Lister is amiable, friendly, welcoming. The Cat – well, he’s indifferent; but for the Cat, its as close as he’s going to get to warm and embracing.

The ship is grim, haggard looking, and in desperate need of some polish and a bit of elbow grease, as they say, but Kryten is all too happy to provide it. Make no mistake, he knows he’s very fortunate to be where he is. In a universe full of simulants, GELFs and despotic androids, to be roaming space in a single craft - well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. He wastes no time, therefore, in learning the ways of his new masters, trying to tailor his functions to best suit their needs – though, of course Mr Lister quickly voices his displeasure. Sadly, one of the more trying aspects of his personality is his stubbornness, his inability to see reason, thus no matter how many times Kryten explains that it’s in his programming to serve, it doesn’t quite seem to register. Of course Mr Lister also has plenty of qualities that could be regarded as ‘good’. He could be quite bright when he applied himself (which was never), he was earnest, fun, always optimistic and friendly to everyone – well _almost_ everyone.

Kryten had not quite managed to grasp the relationship between the human and Mr. Rimmer. Several adjectives could be used to describe the nature of their interactions: antagonistic, hostile, bordering on abject hatred. Yet, there was something else, something intangible – something his observation chip couldn’t put a name on.

Kryten asks one morning as he folds Mr Lister’s laundry away, studiously ignoring his protests to ‘just leave it on the floor for smeg sake, Krytes.’ “Do you hate Mr. Rimmer sir?”

Mr Lister frowns, half watching the Zero-G match over his head. “Why d’ya ask that?”

“I’m just trying to understand, sir. It’s important to my functioning that I am able to fully comprehend and define the nature of the interpersonal relationships between the crew I’m serving.”

“You’re not ‘serving’ anyone, Kryten. How many times, man?”

Kryten pushes on. “The relationship between you and the Cat is a simple one: positive for the most of it, but built entirely on the Cat’s terms -”

“Eh -”

“The relationship between the Cat and Mr. Rimmer is hostile; Mr. Rimmer finds him vapid, shallow and stupid; the Cat likewise.”

Mr Lister grins. “Yeah, I s’pose that sounds about right.”

“But you and Mr. Rimmer,” says Kryten. “That’s a puzzle I can’t quite work out. It seems to be built entirely on conflicting ideas.”

Mr Lister pops open a can of lager, expression thoughtful. “How do you mean?”

“Well, you’re opposites – Mr. Rimmer is prim, proper and neat, you – well, let’s face it, sir -you’re not. You argue day and night. One would find it hard to understand why Holly should bring Mr. Rimmer back as opposed to someone with whom your relationship was more...harmonious.”

“Yeah! That’s what I said.”

“Yet it makes perfect sense that she did. You know each other inside and out. It seems that in each and every universe there is always a Mr Lister and Mr Rimmer joined at the hip- ”

_Oh._

Mr Lister raises his eyebrows. “Just what is it you’re trying to imply?”

It’s no good - his embarrassment chip has activated, he’s gone into full blush mode. “Nothing at all, sir.”

“Kryten.”

He tries to wheel out his trolley backwards, avoiding Mr Lister’s gaze. “I really must be heading back to the kitchen, sir. We don’t want your goat vindaloo overcooking.”

“ _Kryten.”_

“Goodbye, sir.”

“Kryten!”


	4. chapter four/kochanski

Kristine had heard an awful lot about this Arnold Rimmer.

In fact, she’d barely been on the ship for two minutes before his name had been brought up; and since then, it felt as if there was this phantom member of the crew that lived with them – someone she had never met, but someone she nevertheless felt as if she knew, intimately. By all accounts, the man seemed like a bit of a shit, and from the way the boys told it, absolutely riddled with contradictions. He was neurotic yet arrogant; boastful to a point that bordered narcissism, yet utterly inept; completely delusional in regards to his qualities and position on board the ship yet keenly, painfully self aware.

As such, the crews’ own reaction to his absence was at times contradictory. Kryten, for one, clearly despised the man – the ‘arrogant, jumped up little twit with a brain the size of number 2 pencil eraser,’ and yet, hated her too, seemingly in equal measure. Kristine wasn’t quite sure whether it was precisely because she was here and he was not _and that wasn’t the way of things_. And Cat, by all measures delighted to be rid of 'old cavern nostrils', would often reminisce, typically in times of danger -

“Hey, imagine if Rimmer were here,” he would say, tone conveying both disgust and nostalgia. “He would’ve been hiding under the back shelves, using his uniform as a temporary latrine from the word ‘go’.”

“That was Mr. Rimmer, alright,” Kryten would say. “Cowardly little man.”

Nothing was perhaps more confusing than Dave’s reaction - or lack thereof. She’d been told by Kryten and the Cat, and often at that, that the bad feeling between Dave and Rimmer eclipsed anything they might have felt towards the hologram. Their relationship, it seemed, was a complicated one existing, on any given day at any given time, somewhere between full blown rivalry to begrudging tolerance.

Yet.

Yes – Dave would join in during those Rimmer-bashing sessions, but it never struck Kristine as quite genuine. True, she didn’t know this Dave but it seemed in this reality too he had never learned to hide his feelings from dancing so plainly on his face. Something about his grin, his jokes – they were tired, practiced, rehearsed, perhaps over many years. Perhaps they carried a punch when he was young, brash and just out of stasis, but now they seemed like old lines on a script. Afterwards, when the conversation would move on, his gaze took on a glaze, as if he was trapped in his own, private thoughts. Kristine, though bemused, angry, and desperately missing her own Dave, couldn’t help but become ever so slightly intrigued.

Then one morning she’d walked into a room in search of alcohol and found him wearing an expression that Kristine could only describe as haunted. He’d talked about _missing people_ and dreams and old memories and nostrils. He had moped around, all pathetic and nostalgic like a lovesick puppy, and Kristine had thought _ah, ha. So that’s what it is._

They’d gone on that stupid ride, and confronted the loathsome reality that was Arnold Rimmer and Dave had brushed it all off with a nonchalance that was far too casual that it just had to be, just absolutely had to be feigned. The other boys had bought it, but Kristine couldn’t be that easily fooled. It had taken weeks before that haunted look left Dave’s eyes.

Sometimes, when things got really bad and Kristine, depressed with her life and what it had become living on board _this_ ship with _these_ men – sometimes she had been tempted to throw it in his face, tempted to relish the sting, inflict some fraction of the hurt that she felt. She never had - both because she was much better than that, but also because she suspected that whoever or whatever Arnold Rimmer was to this Dave Lister; it was more complex and nuanced than either of them truly understood.


	5. chapter five/nanobot!rimmer

_series 8_

Naturally, he hadn’t believed it when Lister had told him all about the nanobots and the drive plate and the three-million years in stasis – in his defense, who would? The whole thing was positively mad, and Lister had a long and extensive history of making things up in order to embarrass him, but he did have to admit, the evidence that Lister had provided seemed... convincing.

What had really swung it though was the fact that this Lister, this “new” Lister was, well, odd. For one, he wasn’t as devious. He was more considerate, more laid back in his approach, less antagonistic – in short, he didn’t seem like the sort of man that would swap his mouthwash out with Windowlene and call the whole thing a prank – something the old Lister had done on many, many occasions. This Lister even _looked at him_ differently, at least at first. Rimmer couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there seemed to be less disdain, less hatred in his eyes, in fact, he seemed almost _fond_. He looked at Rimmer not as he used to - with sheer contempt – but as if the two of them had experienced it all together - he supposes from Lister’s perspective, the two of them had.

The whole thing had wrong-footed him at first. Where he had expected pithy put-downs or cutting remarks, Lister had simply sighed or called him a ‘weaselly little coward’ not with venom in his voice, but with disappointment, and somehow that seemed worse. With Lister, he thought he knew where he stood, he relied on it because it _grounded_ him. Now, the whole thing was up in the air and it confused the hell out of him.

So, Rimmer asks one night. As the lights go out in the cell he stares out into the darkness and asks, “What was your Rimmer like, then?”

Lister is silent for a moment that stretches on for so long that Rimmer thinks for moment that he’s already asleep, but then he says, carefully, “Different.”  
  
“Yes, I gathered that,” Rimmer snaps. “But different how? Was he more successful? Better with women?”

Lister snorts. “Nah, nothing like that. Just different, like."

“Before," Rimmer starts. "When you were confined to quarters after crashing Starbug you said it’s me ‘like I was before.’”

"Yeah," the bedsprings creak as he sits up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. "See for you, it's been no time at all. For me, it's been nearly seven years. Me an' him, we spent so much time together, y'know. But none of that ever even happened for you."

"So did you and him - did you get on?"

"It's - it's complicated." Lister hesitates. "He was part of the crew – our little crew. Just me, him, the Cat, Kryten and sometimes Holly. As annoying as he could be, he was, well, integral. ”

“Integral?” Rimmer frowns around the word. “Me?”

“Yeah. After the first few years we got past a lot of that stupid, adolescent smeg. I mean don’t get me wrong, we still got on each others nerves, like. He could still wind me up like no-one else, but at the end of the day, we got on with it, y’know. We had to, facing some of things we saw.”  
  
Rimmer sits up, curious. Visions of a bold, brave Rimmer flash in his mind. “What like?”

A shrug. “Murderous androids. Hologramatic viruses. Psirens. An entire planet made up of his own smegging neuroses – that was a memorable one. Through it all, we became a functioning little team, y’know, and then he didn’t seem all that bad. He was one of us – boys from the Dwarf.”

“ _Boys from the Dwarf_?” Rimmer sneers.

“You’ve have no idea what it's like out there, man,” he says. “A universe completely barren of anything remotely _sane_ and _normal_ and _good._ We had to rely on each other, so we did.”

Rimmer pauses, unsure of how to approach it – the great big galloping elephant in the room.

“What, er, happened then?”

“He left,” Lister says flatly. “You were – he was always keen to be a hero, and the opportunity came along – so I helped him go and that was it. Dunno where he is now,” his voice drops softer. “Bit of a shock, like.”

Rimmer stares up at the top of the bunk. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno,” his tone is weary. “Just kind of just expected that we’d always be this little unit together, that’s how it had always been - you, me, the Cat, Kryten. When you left – it was just hard to get my head around it, and _I know_ that I had a hand in it too but I just never _thought,”_ Lister leans back now. Sighs. “Never thought I would properly miss someone that actually _has clothes hangers for their underwear_ and uses _stationery labels_.”

Rimmer raises his eyebrows.“W-e-ll, Lister, I didn’t know you were that close, in fact - ”

“ _Smeg off_ _._ Whatever you’re going to say, do us a favour and just keep it to yourself.”

There’s a joke forming on the tip of his tongue, something about inviting him to their wedding day, or ‘where’s the ring, then?’ something terribly cutting, but he bites it back using tact for perhaps in the first time in his life. Partly because Lister doesn’t sound flustered or uptight or embarrassed by the insinuation, but just _sad_ and that isn’t fun. Mostly because there’s a bigger, more pressing part of him that wants to know about this Rimmer – this Rimmer that causes _this_ Lister to speak about him in a tone practically bordering on _reverence_ -

So instead Rimmer says, “tell me about about him” and he listens to hours of Lister’s memories, carefully ignoring the unspoken, unexamined emotion thick in his words. In the morning in dawns on him that when Lister looks at him _like that,_ all soft fondness and camaraderie , it’s because he’s not looking at him, he’s looking at _his_ Rimmer.


	6. six/lister

_two years later_

Lister wakes up with a headache that feels as if termites burrowing directly into his brain.

He sits up, vision swimming dangerously as he pulls himself into an upright position, and slowly surveys his surroundings.

 _Okay._ He’s not in his bunk, or his quarters for that matter. The drive room – that’s it. He’s – yes, he’s not wearing any clothes. There’s a pale arm that doesn’t belong to him, wrapped around his body. An unruly halo of brown curls. Clothes are strewn across the back of the chairs and across the floor – his leather jacket, his underwear, some tight black trousers that definitely don’t belong to him, a very familiar blue quilted jacket that belongs to –

The memories of the previous night come flooding back.

Rimmer’s return.

They’d found him on a derelict, half dead and clutching a bazookoid. Lister had dragged him back to Red Dwarf and taken him straight to Kryten who had insisted on a full reprogramming to fix his battered lightbee. Pacing, pacing, pacing and chain-smoking as Lister tried to cope with the swirling chaos that was his shock and surprise to find Ace Rimmer, _his Rimmer_ , in his reality again.

Then – what had come next?

Of course - dinner and festivities and booze, so much booze Lister had practically drowned in it. It had been a good smegging night. Through it all he’d felt the weight Rimmer’s gaze on him; thick, charged, indecipherable. Cat and Kryten had peeled off later that evening, Cat to finish his sewing, Kryten to sort out fresh bedding and laundry for Rimmer, and the two were left to reminisce and drink.

He’d heard about Rimmer’s adventures across realities and shared his own stories of the nano rebuilt Red Dwarf and his other, living self. “A total, complete smeghead to begin with. He was you right at your peak loathsome.”

“Listy, I’m not quite sure whether I should be offended or complimented,” was Rimmer’s haughty response.

“Definitely complimented, man,” said Lister. “Gave me a real appreciation for just how far we’ve come.”

The grins and the joy and the laughter had gradually turned serious and earnest as the night wore on, thinly-veiled decorum had collapsed as the two leant easily into one another, and that steady gaze locked on him, filled with something he couldn’t quite parse -

Kissing. Open mouthed and desperate and just what Lister had wanted. Wandering hands, and fingers in his hair and a strong body bearing down on his.

“You sure?”

“Never been more sure about anything,” came the instant reply, muffled against his jaw. Those hazel eyes clouded with need, and desire. The facade cracked like porcelain under Kryten’s rubbery fingers.

Confessions whispered under their breaths, ‘needed you,’ ‘needed this’, ‘God, I missed you.” A mouth on his jaw and hands pulling off his clothes, the roughness of ground on his back – smeg, he’d been desperate, tasting simulated skin, clawing at his back, relentlessly thrusting against him –

Lister’s not quite sure how many times it had happened, or even what had happened after that, but he knows it’d been _good._ He remembers, the lights blowing out as Rimmer moaned his name and _sme_ _gging hell,_ that memory more than made up for his aching back and pounding head.

Speaking of – Rimmer stirs with a groan, and sits up, blinking at the light.

“Mornin’.”

“Good morning Lister,” says Rimmer, and then pauses, digesting it all. “Lister? Did we? _Oh my God_.”

“I know.”

“We absolutely wrecked the place,” says Rimmer, surveying the damage. “I absolutely wrecked _you_. Look at the state of you.”

Lister glances down at his body. There are bruises from Rimmer’s thumbs on his hips, and love-bites littered across his chest. “All in all, a good night, I reckon.”

“Quite,” Rimmer says weakly.

“Any regrets?”

Rimmer swallows, gaze flicking over him. His voice is small when he says, “I er, I meant it all. Everything I said yesterday.”

The corner of Lister’s mouth tugs into a small smile. “Yeah? Me too,” he pauses.

“So what now?”

“Well,” says Lister. “We could do the sensible thing. Coffee, shower, talk it all through,” he dips his hand underneath the thin sheet and runs his fingers up Rimmer’s bare thigh, marvelling at the way his skin flushes. “Or we could stay here a bit longer.”

“The latter,” says Rimmer, without hesitation. “I choose the latter.”

Lister grins.

*

Kryten is putting together the finishing touches on Mr. Rimmer’s breakfast when Cat strides in, hair damp, holding a broken hair-dryer. He drops it unceremoniously on the kitchen counter.

“This doesn’t work anymore,” he says, “and, the light-switch won’t come on in my second bathroom. You better tell those monkeys to knock it off, before I do.”

Kryten stares at him.

“Also you owe me twenty-dollarpounds. Yeeoow."


End file.
